In Tandem
by Satellites on Parade
Summary: Together, we are perfect. Number Four/Number Six, post-movie, oneshot.


**EDIT, August 26th, 2011.**

**All right, so it seems that the majority of all of you out there are unfamiliar with this little concept called SELECTIVE CAPITALIZATION and POETIC LOWERCASING. These are both terms to describe the practice of omitting capitalization from stories or poems, made popular by e.e. cummings. (UH-OH; I DIDN'T CAPITALIZE HIS NAME WHOOPS.)**

**I'd just like to make something clear: I am not, despite what all of you seem to think, stupid. I know that the beginnings of sentences are capitalized, as are names; THANK YOU, ANON, FOR EDUCATING ME. I've studied Creative Writing for four years; I think I know what I'm doing. **

**I'm seriously considering deleting this; I'm so sick of all these idiots sending me reviews that are like, "OHHH, WHY DIDN'T YOU CAPITALIZE; YOU'RE SO STUPID." Urgh. _LEARN THE SUBJECT MATTER BEFORE YOU TRY TO CORRECT IT. GOOD LORD._**

**End EDIT.**

* * *

**Dude, this movie was totally ridiculous and I laughed so hard it was painful, but damn these two are hot. They were the only redeeming part of the entire story. I was seriously hoping Sarah would just fall off that roof; I never found her very interesting as a love interest (but her room was BOSS). She would've been cool as like… a best friend, or something, besides Sam. I don't know.  
Okay, a couple of things: 10 is one of the four perfect numbers aside from 3, 7, and 12. I was sitting in the theatre trying to come up with a clever numerological analogy for shipping them and then DERP, BASIC ARITHMETIC. Brilliant.  
The other thing: I shipped them as soon as she said, "you're good with your hands."  
ANOTHER THING: Major props, movie, for using "Letters From the Sky." I can forgive your atrocious dialogue for that.  
ALSO: this pairing makes sense because if they don't want their race to die out they'd better start reproducin'.  
bamf love. **

**I don't own anybody, in case that wasn't obvious. I've never read the book, either, so bear with me.**

–

_one day soon  
i'll hold you like the sun holds the moon  
and we will hear those planes overhead  
and we won't have to be scared  
_

he would glance in her eyes and see galaxies, places he had never travelled—  
(and he would fly)

as sam let out a wide, noisy yawn, wearily clinging to the steering wheel, four gazed distantly at the rider of the red motorcycle jetting ahead of them; at the waves of blonde bursting out behind her, the sunset filtering through them. he swore he hadn't seen her blink in the days he had known her. she was a steel trap, her face clenching the unsuspecting in its grasp.

_"where's your protector?"  
"he's dead."  
"oh, mine too."_

death seemed to be a routine for her, a pesky fly she encountered at inopportune times. it had brought a needle to the back of his throat to tell her that henri was gone; he could hear the emotion strangling his voice and felt ashamed. she had spat out her similar experience briskly. _well, not much we can do about it now, is there?_

he wondered if he was an anomaly. did all loriens grow so attached to others this way – to humans – to each other? he could hardly imagine six seeing others as anything but nuisances. he doubted she would care if anything happened to him, but he felt a compulsion to protect her; they were alike, she and he; two facets of the same deteriorating nonahedron.

(they had held the halves of the stone between them and it had come together without pause)

the sun released its grip on the sky and fell beneath the horizon, and she dimmed with it. sam glanced sideways at him, a calculating curiosity in his eyes; four pretended not to notice.

it grew dark quickly, and the stars were hidden by fog. the sky was blank and endless. he had seen it somewhere before, this moonless infinity, resting in the spherical prisons of two irises, hardly distinguishable from the pupils.

six put up her right hand and jerked it toward the side of the road. she pulled over; sam followed.

"'nother night," sam said, getting out.

"mm," four replied, slamming the door behind him. six was suddenly in front of him, her gaze metallic and hard.

(he had begun to notice that there were streams of azure that would slither through the atmosphere whenever she would vanish, outlining her hair like brush strokes – it was a beauty lost behind her savage shrieks as she drove the knife through her prey)

"we sleep in the car tonight," she said. it was not a suggestion.

four tore his eyes from the vicious confines of hers.

"right."

"i will keep watch." she slung the softly glowing blade through her belt and leapt to the top of the truck in a blur. she sat with her knees up, her eyes stabbing through the distance.

sam shrugged and climbed back into the truck, pulling a pillow from underneath the seat. four stared up at six, not moving.

"you can sleep if you want to, you know," he called up quietly.

"brilliant idea; i will leave you unguarded," she retorted without even looking at him.

"i'll guard instead."

this warranted a pause from her, during which she licked her dry lips thoughtfully and tilted her head to the cacophonous chorus of bullfrogs.

"you're incompetent," she muttered after a time. "we'd last thirty seconds tops."

"i could do it," he insisted lamely. she snorted.

"your valiance is heartwarming." she was a terrible liar. "go to sleep, number four."

he gave her one last prolonged stare before scoffing and clambering into the truck as noisily as possible, trying to shake it as he did so.

as he reclined the seat, shifting so that he'd be able to see the sky through the windshield (there was still a crack and a hole stained brown from where henri had—), he noticed that sam was smirking at him.

"what?" he snapped.

sam seemed to be trying to stifle a further knowing grin as he held up a slip of dirtied paper that looked like an old receipt. four squinted at sam's scrawl on the back of it.

**[ 4 + 6 = 10 ]**

"the perfect number," sam said pointedly, an eyebrow cocked. four grumbled and snatched the paper from sam's hands, crumpling it and throwing it out the open window. that was when sam started to laugh.

"what is it with you and blondes?" he asked. four punched him in the shoulder, wordlessly folding his arms and rolling over, away from him, facing out the window. sam was still snickering.

"seriously, though. you're the last nine of your kind, right?"

"excluding the protectors. yes." four still worried that any elaboration on aliens would send sam into an excitable fit.

"that's not every much to go on."

"what do you mean?" four rolled over a tad to look at sam, whose face was now becoming halfway serious.

"to carry on the race, or whatever."

four stiffened.

"you're talking about... reproduction."

sam shrugged helplessly and pointed to the roof of the truck.

"can't avoid it, man. unless you want loriens to go extinct."

"of course not! it's possible to reproduce with humans," four snarled, a bit desperately.

"yeah, but the offspring'd only be half-lorien. it'd distill the bloodline. eventually the lorien genes would be wiped out altogether, getting weaker and weaker through the generations."

four's cheeks flushed and he turned away again, facing the window and watching the trees, pondering this possibility. the thought terrified him.

at that moment, he wanted sarah. he wanted to make inept jokes and attempt to be what he understood was romantic. it had been simple; a simplicity he had never encountered and probably never would again. even though john was hardly his real name, it felt real when she said it, like that was who he'd been born to be; her john.

he fell asleep.

(he remembered what henri said, about loriens falling in love truly only once. after the stone had dissolved between him and six, and they had looked at each other, he had never been surer of anything except how unsure she made him with that one stare.)

sometime in the night, six noticed a white thing on the ground beneath the truck. she gave the area a steely once-over, as if telling it that if it attempted to surprise her she would murder it immediately, before hopping down from her perch and picking it up.

she wrinkled her nose.

"gamestop... _shoot many robots_... $34.99... what is this?"

huffing, she flipped it over and was still.

**[ 4 + 6 = 10 ]**

her eyes darted immediately inside the truck, and she realized she was inches from the window behind which four slept, his typically resolute jaw slack with dreaming. she stepped forward, frowning at him. the window was open and the spring evening breathed into it.

she looked at the paper again and reached through the window, resting her fingers so lightly on his head that anyone would feel it as an insect landing. she twisted a finger through his hair and then, noticing what she was doing, let out a sour grunt of disgust and her hand flew back as though it had been burned.

"idiotic," she hissed, cramming the paper into her pocket.

she turned to return to her post atop the vehicle, but stopped.

her head rotated toward him and her body followed, and she wondered what sleep felt like. she had never needed, and so she had never indulged in it.

"four."

he didn't stir.

satisfied, she said to him words in a language he did not yet know he could understand before silently creeping back onto the roof, the paper rustling in the tight pocket of her jacket. he mumbled and rolled over.

{ _together, we are perfect._}

_one of these days, the mountains are gonna fall into the sea  
and they'll know  
that you & i were made for this  
i was made to taste your kiss  
we were made to never fall away  
never fall away._


End file.
